As with others I have taken online courses and have taught online so I didn’t see a lot of surprises. Some constraints such as time zone issues, and knowledge of technology are issues I have had to deal with as a student and when working on collaborative projects with students from another country. Access to the same type of hardware/software tools, creating video introductions, was also a constraint we faced in our online collaboration. In general I wonder about access, course development and assessment time.
Having driven into town to use the internet as initially my only access to the internet with via a modem my mind was also on access to the internet. Until recently there were few alternatives other than satellite or dial-up at our cabin. Fortunately, I can now access the internet via a wireless connection and the 3g network. Though I guess this beyond the scope of this discussion the rural-economic divide (connectivity is more expensive in Canada than the US) is something I wonder about when looking at constraints.
The amount of time required for teachers online is one I thought a little about in terms of a development cycle. Especially in a situation where one might not have the same type of team resources mentioned in Lessons Learned Online Staff Development. Curriculum development, assessment, feedback mechanisms and more would need a many hours. Never having done this myself I wonder how much time is required for reacting to feed back and tweaking the course
I keep thinking about our blended environment when thinking about online teaching and time. All of our students have personal blogs and are using their blogs to write, reflect and collect portfolio artifacts for all of their classes. I have had conversations with colleagues about the increase of work when adding online components to their classes. I think teaching online when compared to Face to Face is different in some ways but not in the amount of time needed.
